This thesis explores the history of European integration in the 1950s and 1960s from a popular cultural perspective anchored to a central figure from the era, Brigitte Bardot, in order to demonstrate that the peoples of Western Europe were engaged in processes of Europeanization that helped legitimize economic and political unions. Yet, official EU policy’s privileging of one (outdated) mode for understanding culture has handicapped alternative interpretations of a common European cultural heritage, failing to embrace a shared popular culture. Bardot is a suitable icon through which to begin an exploration into the diversity and significance of an integrating postwar European popular culture because she was a microcosm of several broad, transnational trends in postwar Europe including the rise of mass mobility, a major shift in European fashions, new gender constructions, and the explicit politicization of popular culture. Her films, career, lifestyle, and representation(s) provide key axes from which one can pivot into interrelated areas of European culture and societies in this era—pop culture; consumer culture; youth culture; mobility culture; media culture; political culture; and gender relations—demonstrating a widely integrating European popular cultural sphere. Within this context, Bardot was representative of broad postwar societal changes, served as a mass diffusion tool in relating these changes to the people of Europe, and functioned as a driving force in creating new transnational popular cultural forms. In addition, Bardot is a figure useful in understanding the relationship between Europe and the United States, while also demonstrating that economics is not separate from culture and popular culture. The Treaty of Rome, ostensibly about economic integration, further enabled the many circulations apparent in Bardot's career—people, goods, information, and ideas—that were already taking place. Furthermore, popular culture was not irrelevant to, or separate from politics and it helps to explain how the escapism and narcissism of European popular consumer culture could generate a rebellious, but sophisticated political consciousness. Western Europe does indeed have a distinct history of shared popular culture, which should be a factor in discussions of ‘Europeanization’ and the legitimacy of the European Union. It is necessary to explore the roots of this shared popular culture so that it does one day form the basis of a longstanding shared popular culture and can become a recognized element supporting the legitimacy of identities in the European Union in more fluid, dynamic ways.

En prenant pour objet d’étude la Confédération paysanne, cette thèse se propose d’examiner les évolutions des formes et modes de représentation des intérêts agricoles sous l’effet de l’intégration européenne. Sur la base d’une enquête de terrain croisant plusieurs méthodes (archives, entretiens, observations, questionnaire), l’étude de ce syndicat mêle l’analyse du processus d’européanisation et la sociologie des groupes d’intérêt européens à la sociologie du militantisme agricole et des mobilisations collectives. En adoptant une approche attentive aux logiques organisationnelles, configurationnelles et dispositionnelles, cette recherche rend compte de deux dimensions. La première éclaire la reconfiguration de l’action syndicale au travers de l’analyse de l’espace de la représentation agricole européenne et des modalités pratiques de l’investissement militant sur la scène politique européenne. La seconde souligne la manière dont la Politique agricole commune « travaille » la Confédération paysanne en affectant l’économie des rapports de force syndicaux internes et externes, ainsi que le travail de production des orientations syndicales, mais également le répertoire d’action syndical. Cette recherche met ainsi en évidence les processus de socialisation et de politisation comme vecteurs de la dynamique d’européanisation. / Focusing on the Confédération paysanne, this research studies the changes in forms and modes of farmers’ interests representation under the effect of European integration. Drawing upon an extensive, multi-method fieldwork (archives, interviews, observations and questionnaire), the thesis intertwines a study of the Europeanization process, sociology of interest groups in the European Union and sociology of farmers’ unions as well as social movements. Not only emphasizing on organizational and configurational logics but also on social dispositions, this work reports two dimensions. The first throws light on the reconfiguration of farmers’ unions actions by analyzing the field of European farmers’ representation and the way unionists integrate the European political space. The second stresses on how the Common Agricultural Policy influences and affects both the internal and external balance of power, the union’s guidelines production and the repertoire of collective actions. Thereby, this study accurately reveals that the Europeanization dynamics rest on the socialization and politicization processes.

Le processus d’européanisation du droit national se réalise à travers les interactions entre le droit européen et les droits nationaux. Il comprend deux volets tout aussi importants : d’une part, les interactions au moment de l’élaboration des normes européennes, dans la mesure où le droit national constitue le point de départ et la source d’inspiration du droit de l’Union. D’autre part, les interactions s’effectuent au moment de l’application du droit européen dans les ordres juridiques nationaux. Les contrats conclus par le consommateur et le travailleur constituent un terrain d’observation pertinent du processus d’européanisation du droit national. Traités par le droit national en tant que parties faibles des contrats imprégnés de finalités différentes, le consommateur et le travailleur sont soumis par le droit européen à des réglementations similaires, en tant qu’acteurs du marché et citoyens de l’Union. Le droit européen cherche alors à renforcer leur confiance dans le fonctionnement du marché. Il s’agit d’une vision axée sur la protection de la personne en tant qu’acteur plutôt que sur la relation contractuelle. Ce modèle du consommateur et du travailleur propre au droit de l’Union exerce ensuite une influence sur le droit national en faisant évoluer, directement ou indirectement, le droit national. Centrée sur le processus décisionnel européen, et basée tant sur une bibliographie abondante en la matière que sur des archives des institutions européennes, cette étude montre la nécessité de repenser tant le droit national que le droit européen. Tiraillé entre une réglementation fragmentaire et des ambitions parfois démesurées, celui-ci est toujours en quête de cohérence. / The Europeanization of national law is realized through the interactions between European law and national legal orders. It consists of two equally important components: on the one hand, interactions during the creation of European standards, as national law is the starting point and inspiration of EU law. On the other hand, interactions take place when EU law is enforced in to national legal systems. Consumer and employment contracts are a relevant field for monitoring the process of the Europeanization of national law. French law is dealing with the consumer and the worker as weak part of two contracts the purposes of which are different. However, European law regulates the consumer and the worker in a similar way, i.e. as internal market players and EU citizens. Therefore, European law seeks to strengthen their confidence in the functioning of the internal market. The focus is on the protection of the individual as an actor rather than the contractual relationship vision. This European concept of the consumer and the worker has an impact on national law by changing it directly or indirectly.Focused on EU decision-making process, and based both on an extensive bibliography and on the EU institutions records, this study shows the need to rethink national and European law. As it is torn between a fragmented regulatory and ambitions sometimes exaggerated, EU law is still in search of consistency.

This thesis explores the history of European integration in the 1950s and 1960s from a popular cultural perspective anchored to a central figure from the era, Brigitte Bardot, in order to demonstrate that the peoples of Western Europe were engaged in processes of Europeanization that helped legitimize economic and political unions. Yet, official EU policy’s privileging of one (outdated) mode for understanding culture has handicapped alternative interpretations of a common European cultural heritage, failing to embrace a shared popular culture. Bardot is a suitable icon through which to begin an exploration into the diversity and significance of an integrating postwar European popular culture because she was a microcosm of several broad, transnational trends in postwar Europe including the rise of mass mobility, a major shift in European fashions, new gender constructions, and the explicit politicization of popular culture. Her films, career, lifestyle, and representation(s) provide key axes from which one can pivot into interrelated areas of European culture and societies in this era—pop culture; consumer culture; youth culture; mobility culture; media culture; political culture; and gender relations—demonstrating a widely integrating European popular cultural sphere. Within this context, Bardot was representative of broad postwar societal changes, served as a mass diffusion tool in relating these changes to the people of Europe, and functioned as a driving force in creating new transnational popular cultural forms. In addition, Bardot is a figure useful in understanding the relationship between Europe and the United States, while also demonstrating that economics is not separate from culture and popular culture. The Treaty of Rome, ostensibly about economic integration, further enabled the many circulations apparent in Bardot's career—people, goods, information, and ideas—that were already taking place. Furthermore, popular culture was not irrelevant to, or separate from politics and it helps to explain how the escapism and narcissism of European popular consumer culture could generate a rebellious, but sophisticated political consciousness. Western Europe does indeed have a distinct history of shared popular culture, which should be a factor in discussions of ‘Europeanization’ and the legitimacy of the European Union. It is necessary to explore the roots of this shared popular culture so that it does one day form the basis of a longstanding shared popular culture and can become a recognized element supporting the legitimacy of identities in the European Union in more fluid, dynamic ways.

The aim of this thesis is to examine why the Czech Republic has shortcomings with the practical implementation of the European Union Directive 2000/43/EC: the “directive on equal treatment irrespective of racial or ethnic origin”, in the field of education. Although the Czech Republic by 2007 did correctly incorporate the directive into domestic law, the lack of practical compliance is striking. A disproportionate high number of Roma pupils is placed in practical schools. The thesis investigates which effects the “misfit” between Czech domestic arrangements and the Race-Equality Directive along with the mediating factors within Rational Choice and Sociological Institutionalism have on the level of Europeanization. The thesis formulate hypothesis regarding the presence or absence of mediating factors, that facilitate or prevent compliance. Mediating factors that will be investigated are: structural veto-points, regulating structures, consensus-oriented political culture, dominating belief-system, problem-solving method and differential empowerment of actors. The analyse based on scientific articles and reports finds that numerous veto-points are blocking compliance.

In the 1990s when enlargement of Euro-Atlantic organizations was slowly becoming reality, a theory exploring interaction between an organization and its member states gradually resigned from primary perception of the state as a socialized actor (socializee) and this concept was substituted by the notion of political actors. It was the theory of socialization that became more and more important in terms of examining impact of political organizations on political representatives of Member States, their behaviour and possible interaction between them. This recent and dynamic theory was often confronted with obstacles, especially in terms of its theoretical anchoring. Even within the framework of ongoing academic debate, this theory did not obtain clear recognition. Researches examining causal relationship between socialization and subsequent behaviour of politicians come up with various results. The aim of this thesis is to enter into this debate and verify the hypothesis assuming that the decisions of foreign policy actors are influenced by socialization of respective political actor. Verification of the hypothesis was carried out on example of Iraq in 2003 by the means of media coverage and official documents content analysis. Possible socialization of six foreign policy makers was examined on the...

European Public Prosecutor's Office, abstract The European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) has been so far the most ambitious project in the field of Europeanization of criminal law. Criminal law has traditionally been an area where the member states of the European Union are strictly guarding their sovereignty and they are very reluctant when it comes to its harmonization or perhaps unification. This is also the reason why it is important to closely focus on this newly created institution. This is the very first time the EU member states established a body with a competence to investigate and prosecute crimes across countries regardless of national borders. According to the adopted legal framework, the European Chief Prosecutor located in Luxembourg is to focus primarily on crimes affecting the EU's financial interests. The EPPO is to investigate and prosecute these crimes and to represent public prosecution before national courts. The greatest added value of the EPPO should be its independence from national public prosecutor's offices in member states. Independence, expertise, and a cross-border competence should save dozens to hundreds of billions of Euros to the EU's - and nationals - budgets. These amounts of money are being lost every year due to cross-border financial crimes, mainly due to subsidy...

The Polish Law and Justice party has initiated domestic policies and regulations that challenge women’s rights. Poland is a member of the European Union where the gender inequality issues have never had such a high priority before and the union is currently operating under the Gender Mainstreaming strategy alongside with additional approaches. The two folded aim of this thesis is to create an understanding on how the Polish politicalauthorities can present backsliding tendencies of women’s rights by studying how thedomestic political institutions frame gender equality policies and Gender Mainstreaming followed by how the Polish political agents can legitimize the framings and implementations to the Polish society through the public discourse. A qualitative discourse analysis will be applied on materials from the EU, Polish politicalprograms and secondary sources such as news articles. The empirical findings suggest that the backsliding is part of a non-linear process where the Polish framing and implementation of policies on gender equality both converge and diverge from the EU. In the latest years, an incremental process of backsliding tendencies has appeared. As for the political discourse, the gender equality policies often end up in the background, overruled by pro-family policies. Also, the inadequate implementations and domestic framings is legitimized by the referencesto the foundational ideas of Polish society, where the EU challenges the traditional familywith “harmful gender ideologies”.

The European Union is one of the most significant international actors whose institutional character and specific conduct of foreign policy make it an interesting object of study. It creates robust policies and programmes to frame relations with both the Member States, as well as with neighbouring countries. The European Neighbourhood Policy, and the Eastern Partnership specifically, is one such example. Even though the ENP was formally designed as a policy of non - membership, the communication of the EU's stance tends to refrain from framing it that way. Consequently, this creates a situation in which the neighbouring state continues to aspire to become a member of the EU, despite lack of reform progress, in hope of a "membership delay". The thesis addresses this discrepancy on the example of the relationship between the EU and the Republic of Moldova after the signature of the Association Agreement by interpreting its development and by assessing how the EU uses its normative power to Europeanize Moldova. Keywords Normative power, Europeanization, EU-enlargement, the European Union, the Republic of Moldova

The goal of this paper is to analyze the influence of the EU on Turkish democracy. In order to achieve this aim, the paper concentrates on three areas, as representative institutions, opposition parties and freedom of expression. The impact of the EU on Turkey has been more explicit during the last decades. In particular since 1999 when the country became a candidate for membership, and that will eventually lead to Turkey joining the European Union. Thereby this paper will examine the demands EU set up for the country and how Turkey accomplishes these criteria. The first part of the analysis focuses on the conditions EU set up for Turkish membership, while the second part explains Turkey’s progress in meeting those demands.  The theories are Europeanization and the institution of freedom of expression which is part of Polyarchy. These will be used to answer the question: Which demands EU set up for Turkey and to what extent the country applies to those demands? The paper is based on qualitative method as a case study. Turkey has in some areas made progress regard to freedom of expression and representative institutions, however the country must continue with political reforms in those areas.